The art of the matter

“German art students ask Internet to decide if innocent lamb lives or dies”. How’s that art? Well, the pair has constructed a neon guillotine – let’s give them a medal for that, shall we? The rest of it is a supposed ploy to teach the world a lesson in democracy, but we’re not buying it. Surely, there must be another artistic way to have this debate. As of today, the yes/no vote is far too close for comfort, and there are 17 days left on that wicked countdown. Kipp is keeping its fingers crossed for the lamb, and really hoping the students won’t actually follow through with this.

This isn’t the only recent case of attempted cruelty in the name of art. “No, you can’t strangle puppies for art” is another headline that caught Kipp’s eye – a German artist has been denied the right to perform his piece, “Death as Metamorphosis”, during which he was going to strangle two puppies to death on stage. Yeah, we were just as horrified, even when we learned of the artist’s intention – the piece was meant to highlight the plight of sled dogs in Alaska and hunting dogs in Spain, which are killed in the same way when they can no longer work. Isn’t the artist’s piece counterproductive if his aim is to reproduce the killings on stage? We want puppies alive, not dead, in all cases.

We areall for artistic freedom, and understand that art can yank us out of our comfort zone in some cases. But, surely there’s got to be some moral threshold that can’t be crossed when causes and art come together. Right? Right?

Please tell us so. There hasn’t been a decision, ruling, objection, or anything of the sort on the fate of the little lamb as of yet, but luckily, the Berlin administrative court countered Germany’s constitutional artistic freedom with animal protection laws that prohibit killing an animal onstage in the case of the puppies.

So, how far can we go for the sake of art? Kipp is by no means a moral compass to live by, and we don’t claim to have any kind of ethical authority, but it’s safe to say that when it involves doing something to beings that cannot logically voice their consent, or lack thereof, then we say that’s off limits.

What do you think? And while you rack your brain for a way to solve this moral dilemma, please go vote “NEIN”!